To think that your marriage will be as sexist as the man you marry?

Agreed OP.

I’d add to this idea that some people revert to their own upbringing as the template, when they themselves have kids, with the observation that in my experience, if they had an inadequate parent or trauma in childhood then sometimes their go-to model is a fantasy of what they would have liked their experience of their parents to have been like. Which can be virtually impossible to live up to in reality. So there’s a lot of projection that can just appear out of the blue when you have kids, even when it’s been apparently very 50/50 until that point.

I rejected literally every element of my own conditioning, which was to be smiley, silent and deferential towards men, leave education at 15, marry young and be a SAHM. I don’t expect anyone, of either sex, to shrug and say ‘That’s just how I was brought up’, if their childhood scripts are damaging to them.

I also think.some people are very quick to talk about upbringing and conditioning.

Men are expected to reject their conditioning and realise that traditional gender roles are wrong whereas women are often considered (on here at least) to be victims of their conditioning and can't possibly be expected to make better choices.

The problem with that is that is only reinforces the idea/belief that men are in control and women are have no agency.

Yeah I never asked men directly if they are a feminist and kind of go and ask questions that give me the answer without asking directly so I will ask what books they read. What podcasts they listen to what men they admire etc

100% agree with this and it was definitely my experience. As soon as all the domesticity started to affect my ex, he was suddenly resentful of my career. When I raised it, his answer was always to bring up how much he had supported my professional training and ensured that cooking/cleaning etc were done so I could study. All true but he still, deep down believed when we had three kids under three that the mental load and baseline responsibility was mine, because he found it stressful.

I was actually reading a really interesting transcript about serial murder and the professor was arguing that instead of focusing on the motivations of the killer to behave like that, you need address why certain groups of people are vulnerable to being targeted in the first place. I feel like this could be applied to much more than just murder.

instead of going “why would you put yourself in the position” I would be more interested in discussing why women are primarily more vulnerable to be exploited in this way.

I personally think it’s misogynistic to simplify it down to “what did you expect, you married someone like that”.

Dynamics can change enormously when child/ren arrive, careers change, life generally evolves. Lots of things play into it. No one can see the future; while there are going to be some examples where there were signs before the marriage, there will also be plenty where no one saw it coming.

I don’t think we should shame anyone over their decisions when they say “I’m finding this difficult” when ultimately that’s the kind of behaviour that’s stops people reaching out for help for fear of being judged.

Too simplistic. I married a man who had no problem whatsoever taking care of himself, his belongings and his living space. To be fair, he still largely does that. What I didn’t predict was how he would adapt to having children in the mix.

However, I will admit that there absolutely was a clue that I should have picked up on, and that was his parents’ relationship. His mother hasn’t worked a day in her life (for money) and she waits on his father to the point that, when he finishes a meal, he puts his knife and fork together and sits back and folds his arms, waiting for her to remove the dirty plate and cutlery from underneath his nose.

Now, that’s maybe one thing if the mother doesn’t work outside the home, but being in a relationship with someone who subconsciously thinks that’s the level of servitude motherhood entails - because that’s what they’ve seen modelled to them all their life - whilst also expecting you to earn over half the household income is difficult.

So what I would say to women is, get a good long look at his parents’ relationship and how that’s influenced his worldview before you commit. With that said, though, finding a man who grew up in a true 50/50 household in the 90s/00s will be no easy feat.

Read what I wrote again.

No indeed. Why would we want to dig deeper into the reasons some women are abused and exploited and apply some critical thinking to consider external factors, when we can just blame the women themselves? When we can frame 'self esteem' as a positive character trait that better women have secured for themselves, rather than a state of mind resulting from the way one is treated. If we stop doing this we may have to stop congratulating ourselves on our own wisdom and superiority at not allowing ourselves to be exploited and abused.

Yes it can work both ways and yes men can have unreasonable demands but there are women who have a child then spem 100% of their time child focussed and just use theit husband as a bank, sure i am aware women say men just have to put up withit till the child/ren leaves home but then the relationship break down and women then wonder what went wrong, no not always but some men are used for their sperm then their services are no longer required

My family told me repeatedly growing up that no one else but them would ever put up with me. My father even warned my husband just before we got married that I'm difficult. Turns out I'm the only one in my family with a happy and harmonious marriage, it's now been over 25 years. Apparently it's all down to my husband though. 🙄 Parents can be incredibly toxic.

Unfortunately, life isn't that black and white. Few men parade their incompetencies, subtle (or not so subtle) sexism or misogyny around when looking for a partner. Those that do, tend to prey on the weak. I think most of the time, the boiling frog metaphor is at play...small changes over a period of time that one day add up to one partner looking around and finding themselves in a shitty position they didn't plan for.

Much also depends on the collective culture in which both parties live. The UK is shockingly sexist compared to some other countries. This trickles through to everything in life, including the subscious beliefs and actions of its citizens.

I think a general assumption of sexist men is that once they've married us, we're trapped with them. They don't have the bandwidth to realise that a lot of women won't tolerate that man-child shit permanently.

@Account734

My mother always gave me the advice "start as you mean to continue". She pretended to be a different person in the early years of her relationship with my father and always regretted it because trying to turn the relationship around to what she actually wanted caused SO much conflict.

Yep. Setting boundaries and being yourself as early as possible is a good way to weed out the people who want to mould you to fit their ideas.

if he can’t handle you during the honeymoon phase he sure as well wont when you have three kids under five.

Agree completely. It's got nothing to do with marriage and everything to do with the partner you choose.

My mother always gave me the advice "start as you mean to continue". She pretended to be a different person in the early years of her relationship with my father and always regretted it because trying to turn the relationship around to what she actually wanted caused SO much conflict.

I think a lot of people put up with stuff in the early years and then expect it to magically change which is misleading to the person they are with, people should just be who they are and set their expectations from the start and ditch people who don't meet them.

The ability to do or not do something has nothing to do with sexism. In fact that's kind of the point.

Sexism is about being denied the opportunity to do something or do something because society or your partner feels that it's your job to do it, just because of your sex.

EXACTLY THIS.

It’s tragic we can’t see how children will alter the men we get with. Most do change, even if it’s temporarily through the ‘difficult’ years of childhood. But a lot of men would argue women change too.

Our priorities change. The focus isn’t solely on them any more, it’s naturally on the baby/child. Looking as glamorous and fit every day isn’t as much a priority when you’re running on lack of sleep, chasing a toddler and managing the abundant load of physical, mental and emotional responsibilities children bring with them.

Both parents generally change and aren’t the same ppl that began the relationship together. If you can work as a team you can work and grow together, but sometimes the differences and resentments only come to the surface in this situation and for many people they don’t like who the other person has turned into. It’s pretty sad all round.

@GreyCarpet

She didn't think I was pretty enough to be loved so tried to diminish my personality in every way so that I'd be as small and inoffensive as possible in the hope that a man might at least 'settle for' me

This is truly horrendous and I honestly take my hat off to people who have been raised this way and got past it.

My mum had plenty of faults (and wasn’t a great feminist role model) but thank God she never indoctrinated me in this way.

I come from a patriarchal household My dad is the king.
I try not to do the same in my home, but it’s a pattern…

But how woman go on about they get jealous and cant handle it because they are competition and worry he will sleep with them

@5128gap

I think its interesting to look at why men in certain sectors haven't been forced to let go of sexist attitudes while other men have. Which I think tends to be about the relative lack of power of the women they marry. Your examples, the traditional WC manual worker and the high earning city worker, both tend to have relationships where they hold disproportionate power through higher earnings and the perception their occupation is harder, leaving no time for domestic contribution.

Absolutely. Which brings us full circle back to the only real structural solution to this for women. Keep your job, do well in your job, earn at least on parity with him if you possibly can for as long as you can and save as much money as you can.

Don't allow yourself to be backed into a corner by his higher salary/higher earning power.

Yes to this. DH has both always had good, longtime female friends, two older sisters and a working mother. It’s not even just that he’s had ordinary sexism knocked out of him, just that he never had that ‘women are a different, mysterious species primarily there for sex and ‘women things (like children and housework)’ that seems to be regarded as normal by an alarming minority of Mners.

ETA I would regard a man with no female friends as a walking red flag.

@SquaredPaper

Yes. DH used to work in PL football, and, annoyingly, probably did more to advance certain feminist causes than I ever have with all my campaigning, simply by getting up in overrunning meetings and saying ‘We’ll have to take this up tomorrow — I need to go and pick up my son.’ Virtually everyone else at his level was male and had children with a SAHM. (And he got stick for it, both ‘ribbing’ from colleagues and in a review.)

Good for him. My ex-husband is in construction and one of the reasons he steadfastly refused to do any pick-ups and drop-offs was because "no one else does it".

Even though I out-earned him by a factor of three to one, he was determined to keep up the pretence of being a breadwinner with a facilitating wife in front of his peers and was basically worried people would take the piss because he was doing "women's work". It made my job almost untenable for a while because I was having to start late and leave early. It was a very major factor in my decision to divorce him.

There's still a shocking amount of this in the City. People think you're a bit soft if you leave work for reasons associated with childcare. It's changing, but slowly.